First, Brandon Hicks gives us “Leonard: The Dad From A Different Generation.” Next, Gayle Brandeis offers a personal and insightful portrait of female body image in the Saturday Essay, “Thunder, Thighs.” Before Brandeis’s own view of her thighs was changed forever, they were her “friends,” her “freedom.” After much introspection, Brandeis learns strategies for coping with the […]

A few years ago, I interviewed a new PhD in political science for a job at the university where I teach. He was a bit younger than me, and a top candidate; he finished his graduate work at a respectable, eastern school.

Dinty W. Moore, an editor at Brevity and the anthology Best Creative Nonfiction, is interviewed by Matador Notebook on writers. He makes some interesting and useful points about the ever-branching taxonomy of specialized writers: “But when these labels become barbed-wire fences, no one is served. A writer is a writer is a writer, and we […]

Author Dinty W. Moore has an interesting tale about chance run-ins with George Plimpton that starts when Moore was an undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh and ends, decades later, in Baltimore, Maryland. What makes the story more than just barroom conversation fodder is the way in which Moore delivers it; setting it out, piece […]

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Welcome to The Rumpus! We’re thrilled you’re here. We know how easy it is to find pop culture on the Internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how. We strive to be a platform for marginalized voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We want to shine a light on stories that build bridges, tear down walls, and speak truth to power.